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I really want to make pretty cookies. I am really jealous of people that make these works of art that I wouldn’t even want to eat. I try really hard and my cookies always end up looking like my 2 year old made them. So last night, I decided that the only way that I was going to get better at making beautiful cookies was to practice and practice some more.I whipped up a batch of my favorite sugar cookie dough and decided to make watermelon cookies. Totally random. I do not have a watermelon cookie cutter so I had to improvise. I used an Easter egg cutter and cut it in half. Then I took a scalloped edge from a heart cutter that I had to make the teeth marks. I baked them off and then when my house was quiet and everyone was sleeping, I got to work. I have found that this is a time consuming task and one that requires my undivided attention. And since my attention span is that of a six month old, I figured the less distractions the better. I got out my piping bags, small round tips, an icy cold beer and my ever-growing food coloring collection. (I realized that I am missing some very important colors. Brown, kelly green, hello?) They turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself. Albeit, a bit sloppy.

I learned a few things that I think will be useful in my next cooking making session.

1. Have everything ready to go. I mixed all of my colors and put them in separate piping bags and cleaned up a bit before I actually got to the decorating part. This cookie decorating business can be messy so this made the process easier for me.

2. I will make my frosting a little thicker next time. I think that this one was too runny. And, I still have not found the perfect icing recipe. If you have one, please share.

3. Sketch out what you want the cookie to look like. When I had a plan, they really did turn out better than I thought that they would.

4. Do not make a ton of cookies. I made 12 cookies. Some were better than others, but 12 was a good amount to use for practice. Enough to make the effort worthwhile, but not too many that the project was daunting and overwhelming.

5. Have fun! It is like coloring in a coloring book. It was relaxing and let me be a little creative today.

There are a few places that I think of as great resources for cookie decorating and inspiration for these gorgeous cookies that I desire. Here they are and please feel free to link up any others that you might have in the Linky at the bottom of this post.

Amanda at i am baker is amazing with her creativity and ability to make it look so easy. She is fun to read also.

26 Responses to "Cookie Decorating 101"

These cookies are incredibly cute and they look edible. I think “perfection” is highly subjective. I think I would much prefer these to something precision decorated that looked as though a machine stamped them all.

Bree, those are way cute! I love to make cookies, but don’t have the patience to do the pretty frosting. I’ll roll them in sprinkles and call it a day!

You’re said you’re searching for the perfect icing recipe, and I wonder if one of the books on my list post today would have it for you. I wrote about my six-ish favorite cookbooks, and the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion has this Decorator’s Dream Cookie (so named because it doesn’t rise much and keeps the cookie cutter shape) that’s really good, and they have a royal icing and a simple cookie glaze to go with it. You can read it here: http://www.kitchenstuffilove.com/2010/07/my-sixish-favorite-cookbooks/ I’ve made one of the glazes before, can’t remember which, and it worked out pretty well, until I got lazy. 🙂

Good luck with the Bootcamp! It’s kicking my butt so far, but that’s just because real life decided I didn’t have enough to do and added some more stuff to my plate this week!

Hi Bree, it’s nice to meet another WordPress-er! I love the look of your blog, it’s so clean and easy to read. And your cookies are just to die for…I’ll take a dozen. 😉 Thanks for sharing your tips and lessons learned.

You’re not going to believe this, but I did the EXACT same cookies about a month ago, right down to the “bite” taken out of them. I did mine with a biscuit cutter, then cut them in half, then took the scallops of a flower-shaped small cookie cutter for the bite-mark. I did them for my son’s graduation from preschool. I haven’t blogged about them yet because I have so many other things I want to blog about, but I nearly fell off my chair when I saw your pictures. I mean, these are identical, down to the black watermelon seeds! Only small difference is I put some green sanding sugar along the rind part. Astonishing…I guess great minds think alike!